Walking Backwards


I had to go to the hospital twice today; once in the morning to sort out registration of our second daughter, who now has a name and paperwork and all the stuff required to start being a legitimate resident of the country, and again in the afternoon for a check in with our doctor. For the second trip, I left La Serpiente Aquatica Negra to be watched over by a friend, and then managed to get a taxi that was lurking in the car park of our block.

On the way home I wasn’t so lucky; at six pm all the taxis in Singapore were either hired or on shift change. Apart from one Mercedes limo taxi. I normally avoid them because they cost much more than other cars, but I was desperate to get home. He turned his light to green and then made a series of circling motions with his hands as he drove off. Wonderful. I really do find nothing aggravates me as much as taxi drivers, who never seem to want to drive me where I want to go. Them, and people who walk very slowly.

After half an hour of calling for a cab and never getting one, I gave up and walked from the hospital to the metro station, which took ten minutes, then got stuck behind very slow moving pedestrians and almost missed a train, only getting home at seven this evening, when I should have been feeding and watering the eldest.

She had been exemplary while I was out (after a three hour nap this afternoon she’d awoken in a tantrum which I was dreading inflicting on her minder) but then howled with despair when I came to give her a bath. She misses her mother (this week is the first time they’ve ever been separated for more than a few hours) and it’s going to get worse: rather than having my wife home tomorrow as we’d expected, she has to have another operation and will be convalescing for another five days. That means more howls of despair at bath time and when going to bed (strangely, she’s quite calm while I read to her in between those two phases, then loses her mind once she’s in bed) and more exhausting shuttling back and forth from home to hospital. I expect by the end of it I’ll never be able to take a taxi again without flying into a rage.

It’s been all sorts of stress. There’s been worrying about how to get our youngest a passport in time for her trip to Canada (now cutting this much more finely as we have to go to the consulate in person, and that can’t happen until a week on Monday), worrying about whether I had travel insurance for the wife and child, worrying worrying worrying. Although I’ve got it easy: I’m not breastfeeding, I have my own bed to sleep in, and really shouldn’t complain. It’s looking really lucky that I took two weeks off work rather than last time’s four days…


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